Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion

Mechanical Philosophy in the Making

Klaas van Berkel

Publication Year: 2013

The contribution of the Dutch craftsman and scholar Isaac Beeckman to early modern scientific thought has never been properly acknowledged. Surprisingly free from the constraints of traditional natural philosophy, he developed a view of the world in which everything, from the motion of the heavens to musical harmonies, is explained by reducing it to matter in motion. His ideas deeply influenced Descartes and Gassendi. Klaas van Berkel has succeeded in unearthing and explicating Beeckman's scientific notebooks, allowing us to follow how he developed his new philosophy, almost day by day.
Beeckman was almost forgotten until the discovery of his notebooks in the early twentieth century. Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion is the first full-length study of the ideas and motives of this remarkable figure. Van Berkel's important study first relates Beeckman's life, placing him in the religious, intellectual, educational, and social context of the Dutch Republic in its golden age. Van Berkel then analyzes the notebooks themselves and the nature and development of Beeckman's "mechanical philosophy." He demonstrates how Beeckman's artisanal background and religious convictions shaped his natural philosophy, even as the decisive influence stems from the educational philosophy of the sixteenth-century French philosopher Peter Ramus.
Historians of science and the philosophy of science will find the substance of Beeckman's thought and the unraveling of its growth and development highly interesting. Van Berkel's account provides a new and comprehensive interpretation of the origins of the mechanical philosophy of nature, the philosophy that culminated in the work of Isaac Newton.

Cover

Contents

Preface

This book has been long in the making. It goes back to my student days at the
University of Groningen in the 1970s, when as a research assistant I was to
asked to take a quick look at what Isaac Beeckman’s printed Journal might
reveal about his relationship with René Descartes. ...

Introduction

The so-called scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
is and will forever remain one of the major episodes in modern history. The
more we know about it, the harder it becomes to say exactly what happened in
the century and a half between Copernicus and Isaac Newton, but we do know
that the new science that emerged in that period had a tremendous impact. ...

1. The Making of a Natural Philosopher, 1588–1619

To the modern visitor, Middelburg, the capital of the Dutch province of Zeeland,
appears quiet and friendly, perhaps even picturesque. Compared to the
bustling city of Rotterdam, an hour away by car or train, Middelburg is a small
city frozen in time. The medieval abbey with its cloister and the slender church
steeple, the city hall in late Gothic style, ...

2. Schoolteacher and Craftsman, 1619–1627

While Beeckman and Descartes discussed natural philosophy in Breda, farther
north, in Holland and Utrecht, the great religious conflict of the Twelve
Years’ Truce entered its final phase. In the summer of 1618, Maurice of Nassau,
the military leader of the Dutch Republic, took the side of the Counter-Remonstrants, the hard-liners among the Dutch Reformed. ...

3. Among Patricians and Philosophers, 1627–1637

Dordrecht, as the oldest city in the province, enjoyed many privileges in the assembly
of the States of Holland. The city had the right to appoint the state
pensionary—the highest administrator of the States—who also acted as the
leader of the delegation of the States of Holland to the States General, the general
assembly of the Dutch Republic. ...

4. Principles of Mechanical Philosophy I: Matter

Isaac Beeckman’s ideas about the natural world come to us in a chaotic, disordered
manner, even in the printed pages of the Centuria and the Journal. However,
these ideas themselves were not chaotic and confused. Beeckman’s notes
and speculations present a remarkably coherent though not systematically developed
philosophy of nature. ...

5. Principles of Mechanical Philosophy II: Motion

Given that the mechanical philosophy begins with the assumption that matter
is purely passive, what then is the cause of change in matter? Change cannot be
the result of any inherent tendency in matter to change, which would contradict
the assumption that there are no inherent qualities or powers in matter. ...

6. Sources for a Mechanical Philosophy

As a mechanical philosopher, Beeckman claimed to be self-taught. He wrote in
1620 that “in philosophy and medicine I have had no teacher whosoever, and in
mathematics I had a nonacademic teacher for three months only, thirteen years
ago.”1 Earlier, he had admitted to Descartes that he had never spoken with anyone
else about his way of integrating physics and mathematics.2 ...

7. Beeckman and the Scientific Revolution

Is the Ramist inspiration for Beeckman’s mechanical philosophy important?
Such an assessment ultimately depends on Beeckman’s place in what historians
still refer to as the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Was his an
isolated case with minimal historical impact, or did his ideas play an important
role in early modern natural philosophy? ...

Notes

Bibliographic Essay

The obvious place to begin any research on Isaac Beeckman’s natural philosophy is the
Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634, publié avec une introduction et des notes par
C. de Waard, 4 vols. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff , 1939– 53). This excellent edition includes
scientific and technical notes as well as remarks of a more personal nature. ...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.